All posts by Th1sWasATriumph

I Don’t Care If It’s Cynical Political Sniping, I Want In

Seen this?

I’ll sum up – Nick Clegg, Lib Dem leader, wants schools to teach that homosexuality is normal, natural, and basically a non-issue. Good man. This does, in part at least, seem to be as much a reactionary stance against David Cameron and Conservative policy as a genuine issue that Clegg cares about.

Maybe I’m too cynical. It’s possible to score points off the opposition whilst being completely in the right; the two states are not mutually exclusive.

Continue reading I Don’t Care If It’s Cynical Political Sniping, I Want In

Panspermia, Which Is Sperm In A Pan

I’m a great fan of sperm in a pan. However, I’m also a fan of panspermia, if you can be a “fan” of a scientific hypothesis. I suppose I like the additional romantic element that panspermia brings to hypothetical speculation on abiogenesis and the origin of life. If that makes me unscientific, well, that’s because I’m not a scientist and took my degree in Wordification and Filmazement.

Panspermia describes the possibility that life on Earth was seeded, catalysed or in some way influenced by material entering its ecosystem from space. And what with various organic compounds being discovered in the chilly depths of space, far beyond the reach of human hands, it’s a hypothesis that is, at the very least, plausible.

Continue reading Panspermia, Which Is Sperm In A Pan

Ah, The Hypocrisy Of It All

I know it’s Christmas, but I’m going to have to bring you down. Maybe you can cheer yourself with the knowledge that something like this will almost certainly never happen to you or anyone you know.

In summary: the host of a TV show has been sentenced to death for sorcery, because he would occasionally predict the future for his callers. And where was he sentenced? Funland, of course, colloquially known as Saudi Arabia.

Continue reading Ah, The Hypocrisy Of It All

The Qur’an . . ? Really?

The day I’ve had.

Cold, so very bitterly cold. Anyone who’s been any closer to outside than their own bedroom knows it’s been cold enough to freeze the smile of a Catholic priest in an orphanage. Cold enough to make people who should know better wear beanies. You get what I’m saying; coldness.

Walking down Kilburn high road (note to foreign types; Kilburn high road is a shopping street in London that contains a pub called The Cock, and this is all you need to know) I noticed a couple of trestle tables with brightly coloured pamphlets. A few people stood behind these tables, picking up a sheet from the ground. Initially I thought they’d been breakdancing, poppin’ some sweet moves in the grindstreet dustcore scene, yo.

Nope. Muslims! Continue reading The Qur’an . . ? Really?

Balls To The Wall Against Faith Schools

Ed Balls, who just has a funny goddamn name, could be striking sparks of new hope from the tarnished steel of faith schools.

Balls.

BALLS.

His name is BALLS.

Anyway.

Take a minute to read this recent article. Essentially, the gist is this: A Jewish faith school in the London borough of Brent – which, for any potential murderers, is where I live – got owned in the Torahbox. It was ruled by the Supreme Court that JFS, which selects Orthodox Jews, broke the race relations act by refusing to admit a 12 year old boy – deeming him not properly Jewish, or at least not properly Orthodox Jewish, in the eyes of the Chief Rabbi.

Continue reading Balls To The Wall Against Faith Schools

If Science Is A Conspiracy, Why Does This Computer Work? And Other Stories

Believers.

Why can’t I just leave them alone, eh? Why can’t I keep my mouth shut?

Ok . . . because some of them think I’m going to hell, think I have no morals, and think my life is meaningless until I open my heart/wallet to Jesus/Allah. I find that fundamentally impolite. It’s hard to say who casts the first stone in these cases, but since I tend not to take issue with the fuzzy sort of believers – y’know, the nice ones who believe in love and redemption rather than bigotry and scientific wank – I only ever attack someone as a result of something they’ve said.

Then the issue was raised of “who’s to say who is right? Creationists take things on faith, atheists take things on scientific proof. Who’s right?”

It’s generally about this point that my brains start to drop out of my ears. Science is right. It has even been suggested to me that, since I haven’t analysed the data myself, scientists are feeding everyone bullshit.

Two words. Peer review.

Continue reading If Science Is A Conspiracy, Why Does This Computer Work? And Other Stories

Speaker’s Corner

Some of you may have heard of Speaker’s Corner, in Londonbox – an area of Hyde Park where, for over 100 years, people have turned up (generally on Sundays) to speak their brains about whatever they feel is important. The majority of this consists of religious nutbarness, as you might expect, but with a smattering of political, social and ecological viewpoints.

You’re not protected by law, as many people seem to think – but police do tend to steer clear, so as long as you don’t try to wash the colour off a black man or anything similarly importunate you’re probably ok.

Continue reading Speaker’s Corner

Why Do We Care?

One of the most common rebuttals I face, generally from well-meaning friends, is the old chestnut: “Why do you care? What’s wrong with religion if it doesn’t directly affect you? Why can’t you leave people alone?”

This stance neatly condemns any attacks on “soft” theism/deism whilst open-endedly permitting criticism of religion that does directly affect me, or people in general.

I am constantly at pains to sculpt my position with the utmost clarity. I don’t like religion. I don’t like unfounded beliefs that have more in common with delusional fairy tales than a rational response to the universe; similarly I am compelled to wax vitriol against beliefs in the supernatural, in the pseudoscientific. But as far as religion goes, I am restrained.

Continue reading Why Do We Care?

Finally DMCA’d . . . By A Homophobe! RICHNESS

I got DMCA’d for this video (mirrored by AndromedasWake) by homophobic moron Youtuber JiLAdren.

I feel quite special. Votebotted and DMCA’d – I’m apparently a threat, and if I’m a threat then I’m sure as hell doing something right.

However, JiLAdren has managed to get the video he tried to censor seen by (over the next few days) thousands of people. He’s exposed me to a wide audience just begging to denounce him as a homophobic coward.

Which brings me to my main point – dprjones provided swift legal advice, AndromedasWake recorded a new intro and mirrored my original video, and people are already starting to mirror it themselves. It’s immensely gratifying. To everyone who’s already mirrored, and to anyone that does, or might, or even thinks about it – thanks. And that goes double to AW and dpr.

You could even pre-emptively mirror my new video on JiLAdren . . . I’m sure he’ll DMCA it in short order, and in any case then you’d have the full set lying in your videos.

League of Reason AWAAAAAYYYYY!

Andrew Parker Lost The Game (And The Metro, Happily, Did Not)

The last few hours have been full of nonsense.

Initially, a brief article in the London Lite detailing how a medium has told Jade Goody’s mother how Jade still loves Jack Tweed – the violent, sociopathic ass that he is – but doesn’t like him sleeping with other women.

That must have been the easiest work the medium ever did. “You’re the mother of a famous recently dead quasi-celebrity stupid racist bint . . . who could we possibly be here to talk about?”

There is no afterlife and anyone who says they can talk to the dead is either deluded or knowingly deceitful. And anyone who says they can talk to the dead and pretends to do so for bereaved relatives is just . . . reprehensible.

And this morning I found an article in the Metro, an interview with one Andrew Parker – an Oxford Uni biologist – who claims that God is behind the big bang, and has written a book (The Genesis Enigma – Why The Bible Is Scientifically Accurate). I was expecting to read the interview and find it full of mealy-mouthed delicacy and tolerance, but it seems the interviewer, Graeme Green, certainly isn’t taking Parker’s claims at face value. In fact, within the constraints of civility, Parker leaves with his ass in a sling. Instead of respecting Parker’s beliefs, something which happens with depressing regularity these days, Green submits him to fairly rigorous criticism – even levelling accusations of quote mining, a foul deed that all too many fundamentalists remain unchallenged on. In fact, I need to isolate that segment as you can practically hear Dr. Parker stumble:

“You say the second ‘Let there be light’¦’ refers to the evolution of the eye but you edited out the rest of the line, which clearly refers to the Sun, Moon and stars. There’s no mention in Genesis of the evolution of the eye.
Um, OK. I’ll probably have a look at this in more detail again. The first page of the Bible doesn’t spell out the eye but it doesn’t spell out any of the science in detail.”

“I’ll probably have a look at this in more detail again”? He’s already written the book, how come it’s only now that he’s deciding to reassess his source material thanks to a well-aimed question during a short interview? And he thinks creationism is unfounded and dangerous despite apparently subscribing to just that belief by thinking Genesis is completely true.

Full interview here.

And, of course, Parker would seem to be one of those people who doesn’t get how the eye could have evolved. For a recent diatribe on creationist tactics regarding ocular evolution CLICK THIS THING